i.12. Explosion Piece
Installation & Video, Artist Book
Explosion Piece
Explosion Piece is a physical installation and artist book that began as a series of instructions for the intervention into an existing object:
1. Begin with something whole.
2. Blow it up into as many pieces as possible without letting
the newly separate parts lose all meaning.
3. Consider this new state of chaos.
4. Collect the fragments.
5. Re-order them to create something new.
This prompt informed a series of physical interventions in books that were taken out of library circulation and later reinstalled in the space. Each book began as a self-contained archive—a furniture encyclopedia, an antique collection catalog, a museum inventory list etc.— that was later deconstructed, modified, or rearranged.
The new archive that emerged from these interventions asked how meaning can be (re)made when texts and images are remixed and reassembled in new ways. Explosion Piece interrogates the book as an artifact and container of knowledge, and explores the human impulse to collect, preserve, order, and archive in order to make sense of the world.
This collection of deconstructed book objects as well as a stop-motion video looped on a CRTV was installed in the central area of the RISD Fleet Library for 2 weeks in May 2023.
This installation was accompanied by an artist book featuring detailed instructions for the explosion of books as well as still photographs of fragments juxtaposed with one-another.
—Installation (deconstructed books, CRTV, aluminum tables)
—Print Publication (closed): 11” x 17”